Washington Post Op-Ed Calls for "Safe Zones" in Syria

US Seeks to Turn Syria into the "Libya of the Levant." February 5, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - As Aleppo is finally encircled and begins the process of liberation from NATO-backed terrorists who have besieged and occupied parts of the city since 2012, and as Syrian forces backed by its allies overwhelm enemy fronts across the rest of Syria, desperation across the West is palpable.

"Peace talks" in Geneva have all but collapsed with the West and its collection of terrorists and client political fronts coming to the negotiation table with absolutely nothing to bargain with. The political component of the West's proxy war has been ineffective and impotent almost from the beginning of the conflict in 2011. The militant component has been waning and upon Russia's entry into the conflict, folded over and sent on the run.

Image: NATO-armed and funded terrorists encircled, starved and besieged Libyan cities like Sirte and Bani Walid on the ground as NATO airpower pounded them from above. The result was not humanitarian salvation, but absolute and enduring devastation.

This tenuous position has caused the West to once again dust-off its plans to invade and occupy Syrian territory along the Turkish-Syrian border - in the last remaining Islamic State-Al Qaeda supply corridor yet to be cut off by Syrian and Kurdish forces.

The call has manifested itself in both Turkish and Saudi military preparations, and now in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

As the talks proceed, Obama and Kerry must also consider stronger measures to protect millions of civilians at risk, including establishing humanitarian corridors to reach those subjected to air assaults by the government and attacks by terrorist groups on the ground. Most important, we believe the Obama team will have to reconsider what it has rejected in the past: the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria to protect civilians, along with a no-fly zone to enforce it.

Of course, between this measure, and calls for the US to dump further resources into the defeated proxy terrorists on the ground in Syria, all Burns and Jeffery are proposing is the transformation of Syria into the "Libya of the Levant."

Readers should recall that precisely the same prescription was applied to Libya in 2011. "Moderate rebels" were also armed, funded, and given aircover amid a NATO-enforced no-fly zone in order to overthrow the government. What resulted was an orgy of genocidal mass murder and then the subsequent fracturing and destruction of the nation-state that was Libya.

Today, the Islamic State has carved out a stronghold within Libyan territory, while two Frankenstein governments wage war against each other and a myriad of warlords across an apocalyptic, war-torn wasteland.

Images: Libya's so-called freedom-fighting "moderates" literally just repainted their trucks after NATO's 2011 intervention, becoming ISIS' Libyan branch. The US now finds itself justifying yet another military intervention in Libya to fight the very terrorists it helped arm and put into power in 2011.

Far from protecting civilians or addressing humanitarian concerns, the United States' actions in Libya devastated an entire nation and has left it in what will likely be decades of deadly, disruptive conflict. So poor are the prospects of the Libyan people, many have fled to neighboring states as well as across the Mediterranean to Europe - hence a contributing factor to the ongoing "migrant crisis."

America's last option in Syria will likewise divide and destroy the country should it succeed. It will condemn tens of thousands of civilians to violent sectarian-driven deaths and drive hundreds of thousands more out of Syria into neighboring countries and onward to Europe to escape the predictable chaos.

The only "safe haven" that will exist will be for terrorist factions ranging from the "moderate" Al Qaeda groups the US and its allies openly back, to the Islamic State which the West more covertly backs. As Libya has been used to destabilize and launch operations against its neighbors, so too will Syria - being aimed at the remnants of the Iraqi government, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and of course Iran itself.

Image: For those complaining ceaselessly about the migrants produced from the West's global meddling and warmongering, now would be a good time to speak up against attempted intervention in Syria by the West in a last ditch effort to collapse the government in Damascus and create division and destruction that will turn a steady stream of refugees into a cataclysmic flood.

For Syria and its allies, they are already bleeding upon the battlefield to prevent this fate from passing. For Europeans and North Americans wringing their hands over the ongoing migrant crisis, now is an opportunity to speak up before it is intentionally, premeditatively compounded further still.